Reading for this week:

Soule, Michael and Daniel Press. 1998. What is environmental studies? Bioscience 48(5): 397-406.

Outline of article

• The origins and development of environmental studies (U.S. bias)

• Emerging themes, problems, and conflicts

• A discipline, multidiscipline, or interdiscipline?

• Ideological conflicts

• Institutional problems

• Solutions for multi-disciplinary illiteracy

• Conclusions and recommendations

The rise of ecology

Ecology:

• the study of interactions among living organisms and the biotic and abiotic components of their environment

The rise of ecology

Ecologists recognized that:

• humans were a part of natural systems

• abiotic and biotic components are linked and interdependent

• natural systems could be studied and understood in terms of systems principles

• ecosystems have functional limits

• ecosystems can be perturbed and destroyed

The rise of ecology

• referred to as ‘a subversive subject’ by Paul Sears (1964) and ‘the subversive science’ by Shepard and McKinley (1969):

the insights and implications of ecology cannot be ignored when looking at every aspect of human endeavour

Ideological Tensions in Environmental Studies

Environmental studies covers a broad ideological spectrum with two main foci:

• Ideologies based in social criticism

• Ideologies based in the natural sciences

Social criticism approach

• Humanistic

• Anthropocentric

• Emancipatory Often view the world and teach about it from

the viewpoint of the human victims of discrimination and injustice

Social justice and equity concerns predominate

Natural Sciences approach

• rarely equate intuition (or narrative) and knowledge; rely on empiricism and science

• accept the premise of evolutionary or incremental (rather than revolutionary) improvements in society

• pragmatic - believe that environmental studies should teach students to be effective problem solvers and to master skills and research techniques

Social Criticism vs. Natural Sciences approaches

• Disputes between these two groups are often formulated in terms of anthropocentric versus ecocentric goals and values, although these labels do not apply to all members of these groups.

Anthropocentrism

• may consider human welfare and economic advancement to have higher ethical standing than the welfare and existence of other species and ecosystems

• may be embraced across the political spectrum

• traditionally includes sociologists, anthropologists who emphasize sustainable development and poverty alleviation, and many ecofeminists

Ecocentrism

• reject the claims of absolute human privilege and rightful domination over nature

• accuse the humanists of "speciesism," ecological naivete, and callousness toward living nature.

• not attached to any particular social science theory of history or society, but generally value ‘intrinsic worth’ theorists (e.g. Arne Naess, Holmes Rolston, George Sessions)

Ecocentrism

• advocates biodiversity, wilderness, and native plant and animal communities (ecosystems), including the services these provide society

• believes that the ultimate causes of environmental problems are either ancient human institutions (such as agriculture) or the genetic, evolved roots of human nature

Ecocentrism

• assumes a universal, deep-seated impulse toward self-interest in all species, including human beings, and that greed or selfishness is genetic and that self-interest is resistant to cultural fixes or education

• Because ecocentrists believe greed to be a fundamental part of human nature, they are less sanguine about the potential long-term benefits of revolutions (which all too often replace one elite with another).

Social criticism - Issues

• access to land / land ownership policies

• concentration of wealth / economic monopolies

• social and environmental consequences of capitalism

• North-South economic imbalances

Social criticism – Tenets:

• tends to favor social explanations (such as differential access of classes to power) for the unsustainable forms of human activity

• tend to champion revolutionary political change and promote bottom-up decision-making / participatory development

Social criticism – Tenets:

• suspicious of pragmatism and incremental change, particularly when advocated by privileged elites

• favor revolutionary forms of social change, pointing out that ‘mainstream’ scientists and activists too readily assume Western or ecocentric views of nature and the economy--views that they regard as inappropriately narrow constructs for guiding public policy

Social criticism – Tenets:

• prefer intuitive, or deconstructive, methods over hypothesis-testing, reductionist methods

• the search for underlying generalities or principles and for methodological repeatability is eschewed in favor of culturally contextualized, occasionally ethnographic case studies that question the cultural norms of Western civilization

Social criticism – Tenets:

• critical of scientists and technocrats as being narrowly "scientistic" and "technist" and may disparage modern science as an engine of the dominant, authoritarian culture

Deep Ecology

• a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements

• deemphasizes the rationalistic duality between the human organism and its environment

• emphasis is placed on the intrinsic value of other species, systems and processes in nature.

• an ecocentric system of environmental ethics

Social Ecology

• it is not the number of people, but the way people relate to one another that has fueled the current economic, social, and ecological crises

• the current ecological crisis is the product of poor distributive justice and capitalism

• over-consumption, productivism and consumerism are thus symptoms, not causes, of a deeper issue with ethical relationships within societies

Ecocentrism

• a philosophy that recognizes that the ecosphere, rather than any individual organism, is the source and support of all life

• advocates a holistic approach to governance, industry, and individual endeavour that respects ecosystem process and function

• similar to Biocentrism, but includes inanimate elements of the ecosphere

Humanism

• a philosophy free from beliefs in the supernatural

• meaning and values for individuals on this earth defined through reliance on reason, intelligence, scientific method, democratic process, and social compassion

Humanism

• affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every human being

• asserts that we are responsible for the realization of our aspirations, and have the ability within ourselves to achieve them

• contends that human beings are a part of nature, have emerged as a result of an evolutionary process, and that our values - religious, ethical, political, and social - have their sources in human experience and culture